Death of the Message Board

List update

2007-09-07T15:22:00.000-04:00

I think I am going to make a few changes to the big list.

46. Print off favorite digital pictures taken to continue making photo albums
I think this one is kind of unnecessary and wasteful. I guess I imagine showing off all of these photo albums I have collected over the years to future kids or friends, but it's probably more likely that everyone will just see them on the web instead.

I now regret getting the cheap photo printer from Best Buy last Christmas. It's essentially junk and the photo quality is ok at best. I initially got it with the thought of saving money versus going to a pharmacy to print off pictures. However, it's quite more expensive because the pictures that a toner cartridge can actually print is much less than advertised. So I am going to replace it with whitewater rafting instead.

10. Apply for graduate school in Computer Engineering
I think I have finally decided against going back to school for pretty much anything. It would just be too much of a time commitment to go to school and work at the same time. I would like to be able to have a life and have fun for the next 4 years instead.

I also don't think it would help me in my career path right now anyway. I would eventually like to become a manager at the patent office, but getting a master's degree in computer engineering does nothing to help achieve that goal. So it's getting replaced with seeing 8 concerts.

I think the biggest goals I have trouble with are the ones that require constant attention. I still have yet to actually get myself to go volunteer somewhere. I am planning on volunteering at a Green Festival in DC, but that's on October 7th. I think I am just barely making the quota of blogging once a month. I just need more motivation to do these things I guess. It's probably a good thing I have a list, or otherwise some things I would never end up doing.

Virginia driving fines, it's all the rage around here

2007-08-08T17:59:00.000-04:00

Wow, everyone around here is sure up in arms about the new driving fines in Virginia. The new fines range in the thousands for going 20 mph over the speed limit and drunk driving. The fines only apply to Virginia residents and not people passing through. This little fact has already been ruled unconstitutional by a few courts, and is facing more challenges. However, the law makers are planning a fix to apply the fines to all who drive on the commonwealth's roads. There's also a lot of grassroots pressure being brought onto the Governor and state politicians to repeal the law. At least 150,000 people have signed petitions to have to fines repealed. The main justification for the law is safety, but also to bring in another $65 million a year for road construction.

At face value, I don't think that such massive fines are all that bad of an idea. What's wrong with having laws that heavily discourage drivers from going 20+ MPH over the speed limit? Not much from what I'm thinking. The main highway around here, the Beltway, is crazy. The speed limit is 55 and you have to go 70 to keep up with traffic. The only problem I see with the fines are that they are horribly regressive.

A more progressive fine I think would work much better to act as discouragement for drivers to fly by on the highways getting home from work. Instead of applying a set fine against all drivers, a more effective way would be to set the fine according to the relative wealth of the individual. How about 2.5% of the driver's salary for the year for going 20 MPH over the speed limit as the maximum. Maybe add a few percentage points for drunk driving. Thus, there will be plenty of incentive not to speed for all individuals, not just the middle class and the poor. I mean honestly, does anyone really think $2,000 fine is enough disincentive to go fast for anyone raking in $500k flying by in there Lexus or Mercedes?

Of course, judges should be given some amount of discretion to lower the fines for some individuals due to extreme hardship. People shouldn't be losing houses over something like this. But at least this way the government's argument over safety would be ingenuous.

Time to start blogging again and lists

2007-07-29T18:41:00.000-04:00

Wow, it's been so long since I have actually written a blog entry. I have gotten pretty far on my green action plan for the year. The only ones that I haven't really done too much with are items 6 and 7. I just got a bill from Pepco, who provides wind energy to our apartment now, for $80.46. It's probably about a 60% increase on our electric bill overall.

I also copied everyone doing the lists and did one like Candy did, 50 things to do in the next two years. I have already crossed one off today, which is talking to our landlord about getting some big recycling bins at our apartment complex. Hopefully he will do it soon, since the city requires him to provide recycling.

I have a good number of active items on my list. I don't think limiting myself to eating meat 5 or fewer times will be too hard. I probably do it now, but don't really keep track. I also want to talk to my brother more so than I do now. I usually only talk to him a little bit while at home. I am also going to start blogging at least once a month. So, it should start being updated more often than every 7 months.

The one thing on the list I can't wait to cross off is completing all of the post wedding stuff. Still about 20 thank you's I personally have to write. They'll be done this week though by doing 5 a night, any more in one sitting is too much.

Green resolutions

2006-12-18T19:10:00.000-05:00

After watching An Inconvenient Truth and the book, I decided to try and make some changes to help reduce my carbon footprint. Thus, I looked into making a list of resolutions, since it's just about the new year after all. Here's the list:

1. Make a better effort at turning the lights off when I leave a room. Even though our landlord has installed the more efficient bulbs, it's still a waste of energy to leave them on in the bathroom or bedroom if no one is in there.

2. Ask our landlord to install a low flow shower head. I remember Clifford saying something about previously have a low flow shower head and that the lady before us must have changed it. Since Clifford pays for the water use, I would guess that he would be happy to put one in.

3. Install the surge protectors in a more accessible place to cut the power to plugged in devices when not in use. This will also cut down on energy use because most everything that's plugged in still uses power when not on. Turning the surge protector off will cut off the source of power to the six devices plugged in.

4. Look into switching to Renewable energy through Dominion Power. I believe that most utilities by law have to buy energy from renewable power if produced and that there are many providers that we could buy solar and wind energy from instead of coal fired energy.

5. Buy reusable grocery bags for shopping at the store. This one Candy has already done the last time we were at Whole Foods. We just have to remember to take them with us.

6. Buy off setting emissions through renewable energy sources. By purchasing off-setting emissions, you can cancel out carbon emissions from car and plane travel through funds used to set up more renewable energy plants.

7. Use plastic mugs to get pop at 711 instead of buying the plastic bottles.

Anyone else have other suggestions or other things they have done to help reduce their carbon footprint?

Who killed the electric car?

2006-12-16T11:39:00.000-05:00

We saw this movie a few days ago and it was quite interesting to hear about the whole electric car program in California. In the early 90's, California required that a few percent of vehicles sold has to be zero emissions vehicles, which essentially meant that they had to be electric cars. All of the motor companies were able to make and lease these cars to individuals, but were later taken back when California dropped the requirement of zero emission cars when it was determined that there wasn't a market for them.

Now, all of the research seems to be heading towards a hydrogen economy where we would eventually use fuel cell vehicles instead of our current vehicles. However, below is a chart that shows that this may not be nearly as efficient as using electric cars that are able to recharge into the electricity grid.

Source: Physorg.com

The actual article has some shortcomings, as mentioned by many comments on the story, that it only mentions a single way of generating hydrogen, which is through electrolysis. Regardless, the electric vehicle has a much higher efficiency rating compared to the hydrogen options.

In the movie, the problems that were stated with the electric car is that the batteries only would get you about 100 miles in a single charge at the time the auto maker cars were available. However, the battery technology has improved and at the end of the movie it stated that the batteries could last 300 miles and recharge in about an hour. For actual road trips, you could make a hybrid car that could have a small motor that either runs on gas or a fuel cell. And that solves your problem.

The only problem that needs to be solved is to force the automakers kicking and screaming to do it, like how they had to be dragged kicking and screaming to add seatbelts, airbags, increase mileage standards, etc. The other problem that needs to be added is to create tax breaks to allow these cars to be competitive with gas cars so that they are economically viable to the end consumer. However, that's asking quite a bit these days for the federal government to implement. Maybe California will change its mind.

DC Improv

2006-12-09T14:07:00.000-05:00

We went and saw some comedy for the first time in a while in DC. It seems like it's pretty usual for the comedy clubs to have a two drink minimum for events per person, but when I was looking for something to drink, I was shocked to see that they had Leinies on tap. I have never seen any Wisconsin beers out here and figured none of them made it out this far. So I had two Leinies for my drinks. I would bet that $4.95 is the most I will ever pay for a pint of Leinies.

Exxon

2006-12-03T16:26:00.000-05:00

About 3 blocks away from our apartment, there are two gas stations on one side of the street on opposing corners of the intersection. One of the gas stations is Hess and the other is Exxon. I am pretty sure that I have never walked by these two gas stations and seen the price at the Exxon station to be cheaper than the Hess station. For instance, today driving back from a day of shopping at this mega mall called Tyson's Corner, Hess was $2.18 and Exxon was $2.36 (or $2.34). I am always surprised to see people pumping gas at this Exxon station when gas is usually a good 10 cents more expensive at this station when compared with the station another 100 feet north. I almost feel like doing a documentary type video with my camera and going up and asking people why there are pumping gas at the more expensive station, when there's a cheaper station within eyesight. I am sure it would get some interesting remarks.

Thanksgiving Pictures

2006-11-27T21:02:00.000-05:00

I just put up a link to most of the pictures I took over Thanksgiving. A friend at work runs this gallery of photos on his webserver and is able to let a bunch of friends post pictures. I am not sure if I will be able to put up the movies I took, but I'll try.

5 Year Anniversary

2006-10-30T19:03:00.000-05:00

It's the big 5 year anniversary with Candy coming up on Halloween. Well, at least I consider us starting to go out on Halloween. Anyway, I have some big plans and I think I managed Candy to pressure her into getting me something too:)

My original plan was to go on a brunch cruise on the Potomac river and see the sites for a few hours. However, those plans changed due to a bit of a bad reference to the cruise operators through work. About maybe a month ago, there was a dinner/dance event through work that cost $65, discounted from $90, that around a hundred people from work went on. About 40 people or so got violently ill from the food that they served. It was such a big deal that the state got into investigating the event. Apparently, the state got stool samples from those that got sick (A funny side note was between a couple of coworkers. My friend Dave was talking to another friend Tonia and she asked him to guess what he was standing next to in her cooler ...) and the test come back positive for a food born illness.

This result was different from what the company originally said when some coworkers called them and asked for a refund because they got sick. The company told multiple people the exact same thing that they must have come down with the flu. Yeah, about 40 people coming down with the flu in the same period of time.

As far as any action being taken against the company, I am not sure. I think the department of health is still doing stuff with the case and I haven't heard anything else since then.

For obvious reasons, I decided to abandon the brunch idea and came up with another idea.

Daylight savings time and work

2006-10-30T18:50:00.000-05:00

Last Friday, I left for work in the dark and came back when it was light out. Today, I left in the daylight and came back in the dark:)

This week at work is a good one for me. I just got my promotion and got bumped up a few grades and steps in pay, which is nice. I also got selected to be on a laptop pilot program. This allows me to work overtime from home because the USPTO will give me a laptop and a wireless router that will allow me to connect to my computer at home. So I will probably be working some extra overtime from home and getting some big bucks.

A few of my friends at work are moving out to window offices this week. I was talking with Rob, another coworker across the hall, that we'll probably never get window offices because it will require lots of people to either quit or start working at home. Hopefully the office will give more incentives to get people to telework and allow us newbies the chance at a window office in a few years:)

Done with Film Cameras

2006-09-30T11:46:00.000-04:00

Stupid film cameras. I am done with them for now. I just developed a roll of film from back from my Boston, my friend Mitch's wedding, and from a tennis tournament in DC. Only about 5 of the pictures actually turned out, with the pictures from Mitch's wedding and the tennis tournament being horrible. It cost $14 to get it developed with a photo CD! No more. I can't wait until I get the big end of the year bonus later this month and am able to get a nice digital camera:) I was originally thinking of getting a big SLR camera, but am now leaning towards a smaller digital camera that can fit in my pocket. Here's a pretty good picture of Candy from Boston that was taken in front of the oldest street in Boston.

Internet Jake is dying

2006-09-23T10:12:00.000-04:00

I must say that I don't really post stuff nearly as much as I used to back in the day of the 200 something posts that I put on the message board. I think my scapegoat is Candy, she is clearly killing Internet Jake ever since she has moved out :( It's probably more realistically that I don't really feel like coming back from work and spending more time on the computer, and would rather hang out and chat with Candy. I guess there's always some down time to post about stuff, but I usually am pretty lazy about doing that and keeping up with random things going on. I think Candy does a better job of that, talking about the whole couch situation, moving, etc.

Book Report - Winning the Oil Endgame

2006-09-09T14:17:00.000-04:00

A book report the day before moving, I must be crazy:)

The book was quite interesting and dealt with how America can use existing technologies to become energy independent and oil independent by 2025, while doing it profitably and creating jobs. The book was filled with tons of interesting facts, and seems more like a school textbook.

One of the main ideas to get rid of our addiction was to make lighter cars by using carbon fiber frames instead of the current frames used today. By doing this, vehicle weight can be reduced by up to half and the carbon fiber can be reinforced to actually increase safety. One example of the increased safety of a carbon fiber car was shown in an accident where a steel frame car sideswiped a carbon frame car at 30MPH. The steel car was totaled and the carbon frame car only had a few scratches on it.

A car can also be made to have much more efficient fuel economy through lightweight technologies and others for fairly cheaply too. Cars using state of the art technologies can achieve 90 MPG at a cost of only roughly $2000 extra.

To actually accomplish this goal faster than normal market forces would allow, the government could intervene with specific policies to help manufacturers adjust. The first policy they suggest is government guaranteed loans to manufacturers to retool their manufacturing plants to build these new types of efficient cars, since this process normally can cost billions of dollars. It would take about 5 years before plants could adjust to make about 50,000 cars to begin with a year. Another proposal is a low-income scrap and replace policy that allows low-income citizens to lease efficient cars through government loans. This would help accelerate the state of the art car adoption to nearly 375 million vehicles by 2050.

As far as suggesting it for reading, it's a pretty long book and probably not a good pick unless you are really into energy policy. However, one group I would really recommend the book to is to all of the US Senators that are on energy committees that would deal with these issues. We'd probably all benefit from them reading this book.

Boston photos

2006-08-20T21:06:00.000-04:00

I just put up some Boston pictures from when Candy and I went in July. I will eventually put more up once I have developed the other roll of film.

Here is a direct link to the page, or you can navigate through the Yahoo photos link to the right of my page.

Angela's party

2006-08-20T12:47:00.000-04:00

Since Candy was the designated driver for the last coworker party, I was the DD for Angela's party last night. I limited myself to two beers for the night. Angela bought twister for the party, but no one played it, we just played this apples to apples game that got kind of boring. Eventually, a drinking game was made out of it where the person with the worst answer was going to take a shot of Jameson. Since I was driving, Candy was my designated drinker. So she ended up taking around 3 shots of Jameson because of my bad answers for the game:) She had a huge hangover the next day and was quite drunk at the end of the party.

The other interesting thing about the party was when we were in Angela's room, her and a few other people were lying down on her bed and Jesse (His reaction is shown taking a shot of Jameson.) decided to mess with them by lifting up the mattress. Upon lifting said mattress, a porn DVD was found that Angela claims wasn't hers, right ... It was some lesbian flick to, no dudes making their appearances.

Atlantic City

2006-08-14T19:40:00.000-04:00

Last Friday, we took a trip out to the big AC to gamble away our money, well at least me (On a side note, my friend Matt was organizing a bar crawl after work in Georgetown and I mentioned that I was going to throw my money away in a more efficient manner at AC, ha.). It was a fun time. My friend Dave is big into playing card games and gambling, and is a big craps fan at the casinos. So after watching him bet for a while and kind of getting the odds, I decided to throw in $120 and test my luck. Since our group was placing the same bets on the table, we went up and down together, which was kind of interesting to see that happen. Dave was probably up around $100 at one point, and maybe I was up ~$40. However, we hit a bad streak of dice and I ended up walking away after I got down to $30 left. Dave and everyone else pretty much played until they lost all their money. I originally wanted to play blackjack, because I did well at that the last time I was up their, but I lost as much money as I was willing to at the craps table:(

Candy didn't really play all that much, ... smart girl:) She walked away with about $75 that I gave her for gambling if she wanted to gamble at all. Which is probably good because if I didn't give her that money, I probably would have been tempted to try my luck at blackjack.

One girl that we met that played with us, Tajal (spelling?), actually played some Texas hold-em and made her money back that she lost at the craps table. So there was one winner out of the group.

Wow, it's been a while since I posted something

2006-07-30T11:41:00.000-04:00

It has been a while, almost a month. I guess that's about the time Candy moved out here. It may just be partly because that I essentially lost a third of my viewing audience, since I anything interesting that goes on, Candy already knows about. I also get home and don't really feel like going on the internet after work, and rarely feel like blogging during the weekends. But I guess now is a good time since Candy is sleeping her hangover off:)

We went to a friend’s housewarming party last night. They had a big jug of cool aid mixed with vodka, beer, grilling food, etc. Sounds kind of like a college like party. I don't think I have ever had that good of a burger at someone’s house. So delicious, I could have eaten 5. The ribs were good too. Candy was proud of herself at the end of the night when the arm wrestling tournaments, kind of, started going. She took down all of the girls. I just got killed by the guys, but I did at least beat Candy, ha!

Psychic poker

2006-07-02T15:36:00.000-04:00

From reading about Candy's and Lelani's psychic experience, it seems that at least part of the trick is to pick up on little signals from the people that are being read.

I guess that begs the question, would psychics make good poker players? The best poker players know how to read people well to determine if they are bluffing or not, or even to tell how strong their opponents hand is. So why couldn't a psychic be good at that? I would think they might be able to make quite a bit more money than $45 or $25 a reading.

Flag Burning Amendment

2006-06-30T19:50:00.000-04:00

Recently, the senate fell one vote short of sending a vote to the 50 states to determine if the constitution would be amended make flag burning a crime. I personally think that this is by no means a problem that requires a constitutional amendment to solve. I would also say, that it's not even a problem. The main sponsor of the bill, Senator Orrin Hatch from Utah, shows a graph during the debate of the confirmed number and dates of flag burning occurrences. The total occurrences was a mere 10, since about mid 2004. A mere 10 requires a constitutional amendment? The constitution is more appropriately amendment to provide rights to the people, such as universal voting rights, ending slavery, etc., not flag burning.

As Jon Stewart quoted the flag code for proper disposal the last time this came up, “when a flag has served its useful purpose, it should be destroyed, preferably by burning.” Priceless. I suppose that if the amendment eventually passed, veterans groups that dispose of worn flags on flag day by burning them would be targeted for prosecution?

Hashing

2006-06-30T14:53:00.000-04:00

I think I made a post about hashing before on the old blog, but hashing is essentially a running group that also drinks in between runs. It usually is separated into 2 runs/walks. At the halfway point, you talk a break and either drink some water or beer. Then at the end, they do some interesting ceremony things and finish the kegs.

Yesterday was the first time that I ran in a hash period, since I walked in one last summer. I guess I am just not used to running on such a hard surface because I ended up hurting my knee. So today, I took a sick day and am just watching soccer and tennis on TV, playing some online poker (In the three tournaments I got in, I won one and placed second in another.), and am doing the RICE routine for swollen knees, which is rest, icing, compression (ace bandage), and elevation.

Again, like my last knee injury, it couldn't have come at a worse time. Last time, I hurt my knee playing basketball, only a few days before graduation. The picture is me on crutches just outside the Kohl Center, which hosted the graduation ceremonies and also is where all the basketball games are played. This time, it comes days before Candy is moving in and probably wants some help moving in. I guess we'll see. It seems to be getting slightly less painful to walk, but that probably doesn' t mean much since it took quite a while to recover from the last injury.

The last injury I actually had a slight hairline fracture in the tibia. This time, I doubt it's anything like that because I think it's just swollen from running too much on concrete. I regularly run on a treadmill at the gym and play basketball, both of which are fairly harsh on knees, but I guess I just ran too much yesterday. I guess the smart thing to due would be either not to run at hash's anymore, if I go to anymore, or only run half of the time.

Photo Albums

2006-06-22T14:45:00.000-04:00

I finally started using a free photo album software to start uploading some old photos. I am now putting up some photos from last May when my mom and brother came out and we went up to New York. I was also thinking of going through all of my photos and picking out the top 50 or so for a few categories like landscape/architecture, people, Candy and myself, etc. Any other suggestions for top xx photo categories. I would make a poll out of it, but oh wait ... :(

Sweet monkey paw Jesus, internet has cometh

2006-06-13T21:00:00.000-04:00

Let the celebrations begin. Internet has finally arrived. I can now make random posts about random crap from the convenience of my own place! Now I just need to find a good place to put all of my pictures.

Holy Costco

2006-06-03T19:23:00.000-04:00

I have never been in a Costco or Sam’s club until today. I wandered into the Costco that's a block away from my apartment building. That place is crazy. They have 36 can packs of pop! I think I would pay for the $50 yearly membership on drinks alone after Candy moves out here, with her being quite the diet coke fiend:) I will also likely benefit from the 24 packs of Gatorade for playing basketball after work on Mondays.

Qdoba

2006-06-03T19:21:00.000-04:00

I love Qdoba. It's a great place to get a great burrito and Justin recently told me that there's now one in DC, right next to the E street theaters. I was originally going to walk a few blocks to get a burrito at chipotle by me, but then I remember about the new Qdoba and took the train into DC. Definitely worth the extra 45 minutes worth of time:)

An Inconvienient Truth

2006-06-03T15:03:00.000-04:00

When I was in New York this past week, my mom really wanted to go see this movie about a lecture on global warming that Al Gore has been doing since 1989. The movie also put in some things about the 2000 election, which was somewhat boring.

Watching the movie, you see a totally different Al Gore. You don't see the boring guy from the 2000 election. You see a guy that gives a very compelling and convincing speech on the topic of global warming. The slide show he does has a great amount of compiled scientific data in various types of graphs. A few graphs show the correlation between rising greenhouse gas emmission and raising temperatures. There are also a number of slides that are taken from around the world's ice sheets that have rapidly declined since the 1970's.

If the movies in your area, then I would recommend seeing it.

Expanding the Patent Office in Denver

2006-06-03T14:54:00.000-04:00

Last December, one of my aunt's in Colorado was telling me about rumors that the Patent Office may open a west coast branch in Denver. I guess one of the reasons that Denver would be the choice is that there is a lot of empty office space in the downtown area. She heard of this news from aides to one of the US Senators, Ken Salazar, a newly elected democratic senator from Colorado. I guess my aunt occasionally works with some government officials in DC as part of her job.

A few weeks ago, I started hearing some of the managers at work talk about this, and it may seem like this actually may happen. If it does, I would guess it wouldn't happen until at least 2008. It will be interesting to see if it does happen at all. The downside of Denver is that the public transportation system is virtually non-existant compared to the great metro system here in DC. If there was any chance of moving in the future, it would be hard because I have gotten so used to just hopping on the train to go to work. It would be interesting to see if the Patent Office would offer any incentives for people moving.

Death of the Message Board

2006-05-29T12:32:00.000-04:00

Jake's blog will officially cease to exist as of June 3rd, 2006. In it's place, a cheaper and better version will reign. As per Lelani's request, the week of June 4th till June 10th will be a week of mourning.